We're compiling a list of "Success Stories" that we'd like to put on a webpage at WorldFamilies.net . If your DNA testing has helped you resolve a family mystery, break through an impenetrable barrier in your paper trail, or provided other exciting and useful information, please let us know.

Please keep the stories as brief and interesting as possible. I'd recommend that your stories be no longer than 250 words. Technical information is always useful, but we want these to be understandable to newbies, so keep it to a minimum.

I had my mtDNA test performed as an adjunct to the Armstrong surname project, mostly just for fun since I didn't think it would be very helpful (since mtDNA discovers the deep roots of your ancestry.) Shortly after I received my results, I entered my info into mitosearch (www.mitosearch.org). Shortly after this, I did a search on mitosearch, and I discovered an HVR1 match! The funny thing was, that our great-great-great grandmothers were the same and were our most distant known ancestor! She had the HVR2 tested also for good measure. Of course, it matched! She's my cousin! She was able to give me photographs of ancestors that I did not even know about! It was truly a blessing!

Now we have another gal who is a complete match, but our paper trails don't coincide. We have full confidence that she is also a cousin, even if we don't know how she fits into our family tree at this point! People tell me that this never happens, but it did! The more people who have their mtDNA tested (upgrade! upgrade!), the more matches we will be able to put together and who knows....maybe we will break through some of those brick walls!

I labored with my Holloway research on and off for almost 30 years. Without question, I knew I had them beginning 1817 OH due to a wonderful paper trail. I expected they were of the NJ Quaker family but there was no proof. EVERYONE questioned by research (including myself), even though my heart and my head told me my research was correct.Then, James Lafayette Holloway (who wrote one of the books on the Quaker family back in the 60s and whose lineage was not in question) decided to do dna...thank goodness. At a 37(1) match with James L Holloway, my connection to the NJ Quakers was right where FTDNA said it would be found. (This is one of at least 3 major Holloway families in the US beginning c1704...so don't say your ancestors weren't Quaker until you have dna tested! If nothing else, James L Holloway's dna can help you 'rule out' and narrow your search.)This family has a 3 brothers verbal history. My hope now is that those brothers will eventually be identified with dna.EVERYONE should do dna...ESPECIALLY if they can't make a breakthrough with their research and/or if they want an accurate family record. (There are just too many missing records and too many incorrect 'family trees' being posted all over the internet.) Science works. Indeed, it may be the only thing that works beyond question!I hope it will not be many years hence that genealogists with BEGIN with dna.

Connie Holloway Merrick (merrickcmh AT yahoo.com)(You really need a 37marker test for best results...and there is no time like the present to get started.)

My great-grandfather, William Henry Marshall was born 1857 at the Barnsley Union Workhouse, Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He was the illegitimate son of Mary Marshall. The family has tried for years to find our who his father was; the family legend has it that he was a man of some standing, and that when his wife died he became remorseful and instructed his solicitors to look for his illegitimate son and make provision for him. The story goes that he was never found, and that the money set aside was donated to a local hospital.

I am inclined to think that he did benefit from his father's estate, on the condition that the family did not reveal the father's identity; William Henry started life as a miner, and up until 1891 was working as a "glass presser"; some time between 1891 and 1901 he became the owner of a "newsagent and stationer" and sent my grandfather to grammar school; the family even had a servant!

We decided to Y-DNA test, (37 markers) and immediately came up with three close matches to people by the name of Wood/Woods. We went for 67 markers and came up with a genetic distance 4 match to a person in America by the name of Wood. The deep clade test followed and we now know that our g-g-grandfather's name was Wood. We are hoping that a link to a paper trail will follow! We are working closely with our American cousin.

I have chased my family surname history for at least 25 years and hit the famous "brick wall" long ago. It ended at 1756-58. I have traveled thousands of miles including the LDS facilities in Salt Lake several times. I had a page on FTM for many years with wills, copies of Court House records, old home sites, Cemeteries, pictures of head stones, etc.

This was before digital cameras or very little info on the internet. Now I have gone the DNA route with FTM hoping to find the elusive connection across the pond and recently added an up grade to the y67.

Tooling around the ysearch and another site I would see people that had tested and had some of my line in their GED. Then I found more and more that had my decades of research exactly as theirs. In corresponding with a couple of them I found they had copied from my information I had on the FTM site.

Be careful what you post as there are those that only collect name whether the info fits correctly are not. There are many assumptions that enhance family trees and to many people believe everything they read on the net.

I am the FTDNA admin for the Casey surname. We now have around 50 submissions and here some information derived from DNA and traditional documentation on only one cluster of 20 submissions. We estimate that there around 40 lines with South Carolina ties that have not been connected via traditional research (30 years at it): 1) Half of the submissions this cluster have 460=12 and the other half of the submisisons have 460=13. This divides up all SC lines into two major branches (branch probably started between 1680 and 1720). 2) We have around ten lines that have ties to South Carolina today (around 25 % coverage). To our surprise, one South Carolina in the same area is not closely related - but is very closely related to another cluster (just ended up in South Carolina randomly). All other submissions in his new cluster only have ties to the Munster area of Ireland. 3) This cluster has several very unique DNA marker values for R1 haplogroups. This is very uncommon and any submission with this unique fingerprint (regardless of surname) probably has Casey DNA. 4) We found an exact 67 marker match of a Hanvey submission to one of our submissions. This submission does not match in Hanveys in the 600 page book that the sponsor published many years ago. His Hanvey ancestor had some very very close economic ties to Caseys in South Carolina. We are now all convinced his line is a NPE line. 5) My 6th gf and another submittors 5th gf are supposed to be brothers via some pretty weak documentation (they married in the same county shorty after 1800). Both submissions from these lines are exact 67 marker matches and share a unique mutation that no other submissions in the cluster share. Alas, this mutation is CDYa - a very fast moving marker. 6) I had compiled around 500 descendants on a John Casey line that migrated with my line. This line has a different early branch and can not be as closely related as once believed. 7) Another researcher had almost convinced me that his oldest proven ancestor was the son of my oldest proven ancestor. But alas, his two submissions do not have the common mutation the my line and his supposed brother had. This discounts that connection even though his ancestor lived in the same county as mine where very few Caseys resided.

I found a cousin I didn't know I had! It doesn't sound impressive but I already have so many relatives documented that I was really pleased with it. Now I just need to find my supposedly NA gg grandfather's parents and my illegitimate OTHER gg grandfather and those will be true success stories.

In the interest of getting more relatives on the relative finder (selfish motives!) I wanted to pass along the latest 23andme coupon. It's so dang expensive, you have to take advantage when you can.

For 20 years I searched for Georg Bender/Painter, I was beginning to believe he had been dropped off by Aliens when I got my first Y-Dna 37 marker match with 3 persons from another surname, descendents of a man born in 1777 in Lancaster County, PA. We had searched the county before and found some hints, but nothing solid. Feeling now he had to be there I went back over it all and worked out all the Bender families and found a family that had been hidden due to so many named John Bender. A trip to the Moravian Archives provided the names and most of the birth dates as they were social members of the Warwick Lancaster Moravian Congregation. Not long after another Bender matched with me, he had been searching over 30 years. This trail led to Eastern, Ohio, and working out all the Benders in Portage, Stark and Summit Counties. I finally found the document tying his line into the family tree and this also solved the 20 years search of another researcher, descendents of Jacob, the brother of my George and with this information and the paper trail proved the line to the immigrant. Along the way I matched with another family who were descendents of one of Georg Bender's sons, without Dna they would still be looking. Now I'm trying to find Benders to do the same with the lines in Germany as several of the Lancaster Bender lines are related. Y-Dna is an excellent tool when combined with a paper trail.

I have traveled thousands of miles searching courthouses to cemeteries. I Dyer Tenn. I got 21 copies of marriage bonds and certificates at the very small local library. Seems the LDS had come through and had permission to micro fish as many courthouse records as they pleased. The LDS left some copies at the local library. Traveling in retirement and searching first hand is great.....meet a lot of wonderful and helpful people.

I think it has. In my family there was a story that my grandfather had some foreign or African ancestry at some recent point in time - Although the DNA results allow for a very small possibility of this being the case, it seems unlikely.

It also seems to have confirmed his known ancestry quite nicely, which is basically eastern England + 1/8 Irish (from Dublin?). He consistently comes out east/north east of the English but tools also identify a smaller pull towards the west (Ireland, Orkney, western Scotland), which fits very well.

However, on my mother's side it seems we've uncovered some ancestry from the continent (perhaps Italy, Greece or somewhere like that - no paper trail yet), which came as a real surprise. Thinking about it now, it seems most likely to be south-eastern European or perhaps Anatolian, so i will definitely try and track that down when i have the chance.

We're compiling a list of "Success Stories" that we'd like to put on a webpage at WorldFamilies.net . If your DNA testing has helped you resolve a family mystery, break through an impenetrable barrier in your paper trail, or provided other exciting and useful information, please let us know.

Please keep the stories as brief and interesting as possible. I'd recommend that your stories be no longer than 250 words. Technical information is always useful, but we want these to be understandable to newbies, so keep it to a minimum.

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